


the last enemy

by allp_wips



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allp_wips/pseuds/allp_wips
Summary: Alex Danvers struggles to survive and keep going in a nightmarish future. Hope returns to her in the form of an unlikely ally.





	the last enemy

Alex stalks her target through the now-desolate streets of National City for ten days and eleven nights before she finally pounces, sure that this is who she’s looking for. 

 

She approaches her from behind and above, pouncing down from the wall as her target turns around an abandoned street corner. A leaping kick to bring her down, followed by a quick tug of the collars to slam the fallen figure up against the nearest wall, and Alex has her right where she wants her.

 

“Got you.” 

 

Her quarry doesn’t seem afraid, or even startled by the abrupt takedown.

 

“So you’ve found me,” comes the muffled voice from beneath the hood that masks the face. “It took you eight years, Agent Danvers, but you finally managed it.”

 

“Shut up,” Alex hisses. “None of your bravado, Astra. I’ve already seen how you crumble under kryptonite. How did you survive? I killed you!”

 

“I don’t know, Alex,” General Astra replies. “Can you kill a woman who’s already dead?”

 

“Let’s find out,” Alex says, ripping the mask back, hood and all.

 

“Imagine if my dear niece could see you now,” Astra says, her tone mocking.

 

Alex’s grip on the hood tightens. “You don’t get to talk about her!”

 

“Do you?” Astra asks. “After what you’ve become... do you think she’d be proud? That you let her die at the hands of the agents you once called your brothers in arms? That you let yourself go to waste like this, afterwards?”

 

Alex growls, and presses her harder against the wall, presses the kryptonite crystal she’d smuggled out of the DEO against the pallid throat, pressing the edge inwards so it slices the skin, draws a little blood.

 

“Go ahead,” Astra spits out. “Do you think I’m going to beg you to spare my life? Do you think I have anything left to live for?”

 

Alex could kill her, now that she has her at the mercy of kryptonite again. Could drive the spike through her, just like she’d driven a knife through her once. But her hand trembles, drawing away from what her anger had led her to do.

 

She’d killed Astra once before, to save the people she loved. But, there’s no one left to love, any more. 

“What do you want, Astra? Why did you let me find you? I know you could hide yourself easily. You have, for many years now.”

 

“I let you find me for a reason,” Astra says. “Look at this world, Alex. Look at what you’ve let it come to. This devastation and destruction-”

 

“It wasn’t just me!” Alex says. “How dare you- how could I have stopped all of it alone-”

 

“But, you never even tried.”

 

“Don’t you dare,” Alex growls. “You couldn’t save your own planet, how dare you judge me for-”

 

“Kara can be saved.”

 

Astra’s quiet whisper cuts through Alex’s angry tirade.

 

“No,” Alex says, her throat tight. “Don’t.”

 

Of all the things Astra could have said to her, accusing her of being a murderer, accusing her of knowingly ridding herself of the only other family Kara had, of all those possibilities, this is the most cruel thing she could have said to her. 

 

“There is a way,” Astra insists. “Why do you think I let myself be caught by you? There is a way to bring her back, but I need your help.”

 

“Don’t!” Alex says. “You liar! Why do you care? You never cared, not about Kara, not about m-”

 

She stops, blinking away tears. “This is cruel, Astra, even for you.”

 

“I always cared,” Astra’s hoarse reply comes out, every word flexing her throat, so that it comes into contact again with Alex’s kryptonite crystal. “Too much, perhaps. But hope isn’t cruel, Alex, now when it’s real.”

 

“No,” Alex says.

 

She had hoped for so long, for  _ years _ , that the apocalypse was all a bad dream, that Kara wasn’t really dead. It’s too late now. There’s no way Astra isn’t lying.

 

“Look at me,” Astra says, low and intense, though her quiet words ring out as clearly as shots into the silent night. “You saw me bleed out on that rooftop, but I’m still here, aren’t I? There’s hope for Kara, too.”

  
  


Alex is crying full on, now, unable to help the barrage of emotions that she had leashed in for so many years. “If you’re lying, I’ll- I’ll-”

 

“You can do nothing that hasn’t already been done to me,” Astra whispers, tipping her head back and looking up at the sky. “Nothing at all.”

 

Alex looks at her, at the sharp line of blood where the crystal had nicked her neck, and draws her hand back. She tips Astra’s hood back over her head, safely shielding her face.

 

“I didn’t want to kill you.”

 

Astra smiles, a bitter thing, still looking up at the stars. “I know.”

 

“I want to believe you,” Alex says. “But  _ how _ ?”

 

“Kryptonians can’t be killed so easily as humans think,” Astra says. “We have failsafes bioengineered into us. To begin with, we need to sneak into the DEO, and retrieve Kara’s body. Then, we need to track down Kal-El... he’s the only one who’ll know where we can access a regeneration matrix.”

 

She looks down at Alex’s open mouth, and smile faintly. “These are all impossible things, I know, given the current state of your world, and given who currently reigns over the DEO, but they can be done. We can bring Kara back, and with her, we can bring back hope for your world, too.”

 

“We can?” Alex is, for once in her life, unsure.

 

“A one in a million chance,” Astra whispers back. “But, it’s there, and we need to take it.”

 

Alex sniffs, trying to hold further tears at bay.

 

“I killed you,” she says. “I tried to kill you again, just moments ago.”

 

“I know.” Astra smiles faintly again. “I was there, I believe.”

 

“Why should you help me?” Alex pursues. “Why should I trust anything you say?”

 

“How many times did you fight beside the agents who took your sister captive, when your president ordered it?” Astra counters. “How many of their lives did you save, in one mission or another? Do you think it mattered in the end, when the world went to hell and they began pointing fingers at anyone who frightened them?”

 

Alex swallows.

 

“Fine,” she says. “You’ve made your point. I believe you. But, where do we even start?”

 

Astra pushes her off herself, and Alex stumbles back, feeling weirdly disgruntled at the loss of contact between them.

 

“We should take cover first,” Astra says, straightening herself out, and her voice is already the steel of a general’s. “You’ve probably already given us away to Lockwood’s spies, with this ambush, so we’ll need to go underground. Next week, we’ll set down-”

 

She strides away from Alex as she keeps talking, gesturing with her hands as she lays out her nascent plan. It’s clear that she’s been thinking about this for a while, just as it’s clear that she expects Alex to follow her, despite their past history.

 

Alex shouldn’t follow her. She is nothing to this woman. This is all probably a ruse of some kind. And yet, when Alex thinks about it, she knows she’d trust Astra, who’d once been her enemy, over just about any other person living that she’d once called an ally. 

 

So Alex follows her, follows Astra into the unknown future, follows the promise that she’d one day regain the life and sister that she’d once had.


End file.
